The KGB in Iran: Defecting to MI6 with Ben Macintyre (Ep 1)

The Rest Is Classified

This episode of 'The Rest Is Classified' explores the true story of Vladimir Kuzichkin, a Soviet KGB officer who defected to MI6 in Iran during the

Key takeaways

• Kuzichkin's defection was driven by both ideological doubts and intense personal issues, particularly erectile dysfunction, which he sought to resolve through espionage.

Main topics

• Soviet KGB operations in Iran
• Defection and espionage during the Cold War

Notable quotes

"It is one of the reasons why the Iranian regime is the way it is today. It's down to this one spy." – Ben Macintyre

Conclusion

The episode concludes by highlighting how Redwood's personal struggles—particularly

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Speaker 1 (0:24) KGB officer is recruited by MI6 in Iran at a time of revolutionary upheaval. His intelligence helped shape the Cold War. But how far is Agent Redwood motivated by some rather personal difficulties? Well, Speaker 3 (0:38) welcome to The Rest Is Classified. Speaker 1 (0:40) I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And welcome to a very special series as we delve into the amazing story of an MI6 agent known as Redwood. His real name is Russian, Vladimir Anatolevich Kuzichkin. He's a man who embodies, I think it's fair to say, some of the very complex human motivations of those who end up spying for other countries. I would wager that Kuzichkin's name is not particularly well known among espionage history aficionados. The story is pretty shadowy up until this point, but the amazing tale has finally come out or is coming out. hasn't it, Gordon? Speaker 3 (1:20) That's right. Thanks to the writer, Ben McIntyre, author of many wonderful books, including on Gordievsky, as well as others, Second World War onwards, and the author of the new book, Redwood, which is out now. And we're very pleased to say Ben is with us to talk about this story. Welcome, Ben. Delighted to be here. It is a very unusual story. It's fair to say, as we kind of teased at the top, come for the spying, stay for the discussion of erectile dysfunction. We shall get to that later. It's a fascinating story, Ben, and it's also one which is amazing as a human drama, but also, I guess, even resonates up to today in terms of Iran and its importance. Speaker 2 (1:57) Yes, I mean, it has huge and, to me, when I started this project, entirely unexpected modern echoes. Some of the main characters in this story on the Iranian side are the same people who are still in control in Tehran. And this, in a way, is the origin story, one of the origin stories of the Iranian regime. It is one of the reasons why the Iranian regime is the way it is today. It's down to this one. spy. And in a way, that's why I love this story. It has both a kind of huge macro significance. It is a globally important story. That's something, as you guys well know, that you can't say of many spies, that they actually change, strategically change the dials of history. But Redwood really does. And yet it boils down in a way to a highly personal, very private, very secret. personal problem that he himself had. So it combines, I loved writing it because it combines both the human and the global political in a way that is, when it happens in Spy World, pretty magical. Speaker 1 (3:08) This episode is brought to you by HP. 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Trick listeners also benefit from 10 % off HP business technology with the code TRICK10. Speaker 1 (4:14) So then, I mean, maybe we start with the human. Can you set up who Redwood was, is? Who is this Vladimir Kuzichkin? Speaker 2 (4:23) Kuzichkin was a classic recruit to the KGB or appeared to be in the 1960s. His father or the man he thought was his father was a KGB officer. He'd been brought up in that very closed, rather privileged world of a Soviet KGB family. He was in the army for his national service. He was then classically recruited by the KGB. But right from the beginning, Kuzichkin was slightly different from his fellow recruits into the KGB. He was always somewhat alienated from the Soviet regime. He had his doubts about it from the beginning. And one of the things that happened to him very early in life was that he discovered that the man who had brought him up as his father, a brutal, alcoholic, wife-abusing, violent man, was not his father at all. He wasn't related to him at all. His real father, it turned out, was someone else who had died when Kuzichkin was about in his early 20s. And his mother sort of confessed that she had brought him up as someone that he wasn't. And that, I think, had a profound effect on him in the sense that he realized you could be somebody on the outside and yet be someone completely different on the inside. And that, I think, is in a way that's the track on which his future life would run. But initially, he appeared to be a perfectly loyal and patriotic and determined and ambitious and very good KGB officer. I mean, he was selected for. the illegals section of the KGB, Department S. Speaker 3 (5:55) Which we should explain, if people might know this from previous podcasts we've done, but that's the bit that sends people under deep cover abroad, not under diplomatic cover, so the Russians call it, illegal. Speaker 2 (6:05) But it is the elite, isn't it? It is. I Speaker 3 (6:06) mean, Speaker 2 (6:06) that's Speaker 3 (6:07) what Speaker 2 (6:07) he'd been picked for. It is. And in the 1960s and 70s, it was one of the most powerful departments in the KGB. It was certainly one of the best funded. And from the Western point of view, it was also one of the most mysterious. The West did not understand how the KGB planted illegals abroad. And it was a huge operation. I mean, nobody, to coin a phrase, nobody does it better than the Russians. Planting these people under completely fake identities in foreign countries was what Kuzichkin did. So there's a sort of irony here, too. So his first major job for the KGB was manufacturing people who didn't really exist, creating false identities for people and then planting them abroad. And he excelled at it. He was really he was very, very good at it. His degree was at the Oriental Studies faculty in Moscow, and he spoke. Very, very good Farsi, the language of Iran. So he was always destined for a posting in Iran. And he was destined for high things. He was marked out right from the beginning as a real high flyer within the KGB. And also as being quite tall. Yes. This is the other one of many distinguishing features of Vladimir Kuznitskin was that he was six foot four going on six foot five. How tall are you, David? I'm six foot five. Okay. Speaker 3 (7:20) Yeah. You could have Speaker 2 (7:21) gone toe to toe. I don't Speaker 3 (7:24) think Speaker 2 (7:24) you'd have been able to go toe to toe with him in breadth. I mean, he was a big guy. He was about three and a half foot wide as well as big. I mean, he was an enormous man. And at the time, six foot five was a height. Imagine trying to do counter surveillance when you're six foot five. It's not easy, but you will know, David. I mean, in America, you would blend in much easier with all those basketball players. But at the time, you know, in the 1960s and 70s, that was hugely taught, particularly in Soviet Russia. So he was distinctive in that way as well. Extremely handsome, you know, in a way, sort of the perfect KGB officer. You're actually right. Kosichkin was a shy, awkward young man. as tall people sometimes are in Speaker 3 (8:05) your book. Speaker 2 (8:06) I mean, I was thinking that it's exactly like you, David. Yeah, president. Yeah, shy, shy, retiring. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Except when drunk. So you also like to drink. Boy, did he like to drink. I mean, again, not unheard of in the Soviet. era, and for tall people. But filling his boots. Tall, shy. Tall, shy and drunk. There we go. He Speaker 1 (8:29) sort Speaker 2 (8:31) of covered his innate shyness and awkwardness with alcohol. And I'm afraid the alcohol is a recurrent theme in his story. But he gets married as well, doesn't he? He does. He met and fell in love with a woman called Galina, who was a young, very pretty, very patriotic Soviet citizen, really. And theirs was a kind of perfect marriage in lots of ways, or appeared to be. To be appointed abroad as a KGB officer, you had to be married. It was one of the rules that the KGB laid down because they believed, perhaps rightly, that a KGB officer was much less likely to defect. if he was out there with his family. It was just going to be harder for him to do. So in a way, she was his passport to a foreign posting, and he was her passport to a life of glamour abroad as the wife of a serving KGB officer. Now, that was like joining the absolute elite of the Soviet Union. So theirs appeared to be the perfect Speaker 1 (9:32) partnership. I was struck as I was reading the book in thinking that... Speaker 1 (9:38) Galina and Kozichkin would be quite simpatico in their feelings toward the Soviet state because her family had been really ravaged during the terror. But she doesn't seem to share much of his sort of interior life and really dissent about the Soviet state. She's kind of happy to put it in the past and move on. Speaker 2 (9:59) That's right, David. But in a way, that is not unknown as well. Speaker 1 (10:02) I Speaker 2 (10:02) mean, it's, you know, her reaction to the sort of horrors of the past was not to think about them. Really. I mean, she was not a political person. She was in no way stupid, but she was not engaged in the world in that way. She was quite a happy person. I think she was quite a simple person in lots of ways. And Kuzichkin did not share with her his anxieties and his growing... We don't want to jump too far ahead in this story because this does happen sort of later, but he was dubious from the start about the party, the ideology. and to some extent the KGB. But that disillusionment is gradual and spreading for him. And he never told Galina about it. So in a strange way, their story already had a secret in the middle of it. And they go to Iran. So he's posted to Iran in Speaker 3 (10:49) 1977, I think. That's Speaker 2 (10:51) right. That's right. So Speaker 3 (10:52) let's maybe paint a bit of a picture of Iran at that time, because it's still the Shah's time, backed by the West. But it's starting to disintegrate, isn't it? Speaker 2 (11:02) And he arrives at what appears to be the height of the Shah's power. You know, the money is pouring in, the oil is pouring out. Tehran is filled with expatriates. There are lots of Americans, there are lots of Brits. It's a great cosmopolitan churning city. And underneath the surface, there is this growing fury, popular fury about the sort of excesses and the greed of the ruling class in Tehran. focused on the Shah. There's a